A Terrible Temptation | Page 8

her mistress's condition, and stood stock-still, calling,
"Polly," but with the most perfect tranquillity the mind can conceive.
In ran a strapping house-maid, with black eyes and brown arms, went
down on her knees, and said, firmly though respectfully, "Give her me,
sir."
She got behind her struggling mistress, pulled her up into her own lap,
and pinned her by the wrists with a vigorous grasp.
The lady struggled, and ground her teeth audibly, and flung her arms
abroad. The maid applied all her rustic strength and harder muscle to
hold her within bounds. The four arms went to and fro in a magnificent
struggle, and neither could the maid hold the mistress still, nor the
mistress shake off the maid's grasp, nor strike anything to hurt herself.
Sir Charles, thrust out of the play looked on with pity and anxiety, and
the little page at the door--combining art and nature--stuck stock-still in
a military attitude, and blubbered aloud.
As for the housekeeper, she remained in the middle of the room with
folded arms, and looked down on the struggle with a singular
expression of countenance. There was no agitation whatever, but a sort
of thoughtful examination, half cynical, half admiring.
However, as soon as the boy's sobs reached her ear she wakened up,
and said, tenderly, "What is the child crying for? Run and get a basin of
water, and fling it all over her; that will bring her to in a minute."
The page departed swiftly on this benevolent errand.
Then the lady gave a deep sigh, and ceased to struggle.
Next she stared in all their faces, and seemed to return to
consciousness.
Next she spoke, but very feebly. "Help me up," she sighed.
Sir Charles and Polly raised her, and now there was a marvelous
change. The vigorous vixen was utterly weak, and limp as a wet
towel--a woman of jelly. As such they handled her, and deposited her
gingerly on the sofa.
Now the page ran in hastily with the water. Up jumps the poor lax
sufferer, with flashing eyes: "You dare come near me with it!" Then to
the female servants: "Call yourselves women, and water my lilac silk,
not two hours old?" Then to the housekeeper: "You old monster, you
wanted it for your Polly. Get out of my sight, _the lot!"_
Then, suddenly remembering how feeble she was, she sank instantly

down, and turned piteously and languidly to Sir Charles. "They eat my
bread, and rob me, and hate me," said she, faintly. "I have but one
friend on earth." She leaned tenderly toward Sir Charles as that friend;
but before she quite reached him she started back, her eyes filled with
sudden horror. "And he forsakes me!" she cried; and so turned away
from him despairingly, and began to cry bitterly, with head averted
over the sofa, and one hand hanging by her side for Sir Charles to take
and comfort her. He tried to take it. It resisted; and, under cover of that
little disturbance, the other hand dexterously whipped two pins out of
her hair. The long brown tresses--all her own--fell over her eyes and
down to her waist, and the picture of distressed beauty was complete.
Even so did the women of antiquity conquer male pity--_"solutis
crinibus."_
The females interchanged a meaning glance, and retired; then the boy
followed them with his basin, sore perplexed, but learning life in this
admirable school.
Sir Charles then, with the utmost kindness, endeavored to reconcile the
weeping and disheveled fair to that separation which circumstances
rendered necessary. But she was inconsolable, and he left the house,
perplexed and grieved; not but what it gratified his vanity a little to find
himself beloved all in a moment, and the Somerset unvixened. He
could not help thinking how wide must be the circle of his charms,
which had won the affections of two beautiful women so opposite in
character as Bella Bruce and La Somerset.
The passion of this latter seemed to grow. She wrote to him every day,
and begged him to call on her.
She called on him--she who had never called on a man before.
She raged with jealousy; she melted with grief. She played on him with
all a woman's artillery; and at last actually wrung from him what she
called a reprieve.
Richard Bassett called on her, but she would not receive him; so then
he wrote to her, urging co-operation, and she replied, frankly, that she
took no interest in his affairs; but that she was devoted to Sir Charles,
and should keep him for herself. Vanity tempted her to add that he (Sir
Charles) was with her every day, and the wedding postponed.
This last seemed too good to be true, so Richard Bassett set his servant